When we brought together DoubleClick and the Google Analytics 360 Suite under Google Marketing Platform, we knew we had to make some changes to our websites, blogs and social media channels too. Now, the resources you’ve been reading and visiting over the years have been updated to reflect our new brand, so you can find the latest news, tips and more on our advertising and analytics solutions in one spot.

First, you should know that we’ve moved our content and product information to marketingplatform.google.com. You’ll also find product sign-in links there. (Those bookmarks you have for the old DoubleClick and Google Analytics websites should automatically redirect you.)

We’ve also launched new and improved blogs, with information for our product users and enterprise customers. We’ll be regularly updating them with product news and digital marketing insights. Bookmark us.

Of course, you can also connect with Google Marketing Platform on social:

We believe that measurement you can trust is critical for brands trying to understand the impact of their marketing. But as the customer journey has become more complex, measurement has become increasingly challenging. And while Google strives to build great solutions, some marketers prefer to rely on third-party measurement solutions.

That’s why we’re announcing Google Measurement Partners, a program that brings together new and existing partnerships to offer brands a variety of options to measure their advertising media.

Our launch partners are recognized leaders within their focus areas and provide solutions widely used by the industry. They meet rigorous standards for accuracy and use reliable methodologies to measure KPIs that matter for marketers. And we work closely with them to ensure the solutions respect user privacy.

With trust and transparency at its foundation, Measurement Partners continues our commitment to providing both quality and choice when it comes to measuring performance and helping marketers better understand their customers. Alongside our partners, we’ll keep working to establish commonly accepted standards and advanced measurement solutions that help raise the bar for the industry.

Today, we’re introducing new Cross Device features to Google Analytics. Analytics will now help you understand the journey your customers are taking across their devices as they interact with your website, giving you a complete view of the impact of your marketing so you can run smarter campaigns that deliver more tailored experiences to your customers.

Piecing together a more complete picture

Cross Device reporting in Analytics takes into account people who visit your website multiple times from different devices. Now, instead of seeing metrics in Analytics that show two separate sessions (e.g., one on desktop and the other on mobile), you’ll be able to see when users visited your website from two different devices. By understanding these device interactions as part of a broader customer experience, you can make more informed product and marketing decisions.

Say you’re a marketer for a travel company. With the new Acquisition Device report, you may find that a lot of your customers first come to your website on mobile to do their initial research before booking a trip later on desktop. Based on that insight, you might choose to prioritize mobile ad campaigns to reach people as they start to plan their trip.

In addition to the Acquisition Device report, you’ll soon have access to other Cross Device reports like Device Overlap, Device Paths and Channels. Our Cross Device reports only display aggregated and anonymized data from people who have opted in to personalized advertising (as always users can opt out at any time).

Reaching the right customers along the way

Analytics will also now help you create smarter audiences based on the actions people take on various devices. That way you can deliver more relevant and useful experiences.

Let’s say you’re a shoe retailer and you want to share a special promotion with your most loyal customers. You decide this means people who have purchased more than $500 in shoes on your website in the last 12 months using any of their devices. If a group of customers buy $300 worth of shoes on their phone and another $300 on their desktop, they’re just as valuable as another group who spend $600 on a single device, right?

Analytics now understands that these two groups of customers actually spent the same amount on your website, helping you create a more accurate audience list to reach the right customers. And spend isn’t the only way to segment and build audiences. You can also create remarketing campaigns to reach audiences based on how many times they visit your website across multiple devices.

Get started

To use these new Cross Device features, start by visiting the Admin section of your Analytics account and choose the setting to activate Google signals. (If you don’t see this setting, you will soon—we’ll roll it out to all Analytics accounts over the coming weeks.) There’s no need to update your website code or get additional assistance from a developer.

With these new beta features in Analytics, we hope you’ll quickly see that by better understanding the customer journey across devices, you can create more relevant and useful experiences for your customers.

The ways people get things done are constantly changing, from finding the closest coffee shop to organizing family photos. Earlier this year, we explored how machine learning is being used to improve our consumer products and help people get stuff done.

In just one hour, we’ll share how we're helping marketers unlock more opportunities for their businesses with our largest deployment of machine learning in ads. We’ll explore how this technology works in our products and why it’s key to delivering the helpful and frictionless experiences consumers expect from brands.

Consumers today are more curious, more demanding, and they expect to get things done faster because of mobile. As a result, they expect your ads to be helpful and personalized. Doing this isn’t easy, especially at scale. That’s why we’re introducing responsive search ads. Responsive search ads combine your creativity with the power of Google’s machine learning to help you deliver relevant, valuable ads.

Simply provide up to 15 headlines and 4 description lines, and Google will do the rest. By testing different combinations, Google learns which ad creative performs best for any search query. So people searching for the same thing might see different ads based on context.

We know this kind of optimization works: on average, advertisers who use Google’s machine learning to test multiple creative see up to 15 percent more clicks.1 Responsive search ads will start rolling out to advertisers over the next several months.

Maximize relevance and performance on YouTube

People watch over 1 billion hours of video on YouTube every day. And increasingly, they’re tuning in for inspiration and information on purchases large and small. For example, nearly 1 in 2 car buyers say they turn to YouTube for information before their purchase.2 And nearly 1 in 2 millennials go there for food preparation tips before deciding what ingredients to buy.3 That means it’s critical your video ads show at the right moment to the right audience.

Machine learning helps us turn that attention into results on YouTube. In the past, we’ve helped you optimize campaigns for views and impressions. Later this year, we’re rolling out Maximize lift to help you reach people who are most likely to consider your brand after seeing a video ad. This new Smart Bidding strategy is also powered by machine learning. It automatically adjusts bids at auction time to maximize the impact your video ads have on brand perception throughout the consumer journey.

Maximize lift is available now as a beta and will roll out to advertisers globally later this year.

Drive more foot traffic with Local campaigns

Whether they start their research on YouTube or Google, people still make the majority of their purchases in physical stores. In fact, mobile searches for “near me” have grown over 3X in the past two years4, and almost 80 percent of shoppers will go in store when there’s an item they want immediately.5 For many of you, that means driving foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar locations is critical—especially during key moments in the year, like in-store events or promotions.

Today we’re introducing Local campaigns: a new campaign type designed to drive store visits exclusively. Provide a few simple things—like your business locations and ad creative—and Google automatically optimizes your ads across properties to bring more customers into your store.

Show your business locations across Google properties and networks

Local campaigns will roll out to advertisers globally over the coming months.

Get the most from your Shopping campaigns

Earlier this year, we rolled out a new Shopping campaign type that optimizes performance based on your goals. These Smart Shopping campaign help you hit your revenue goals without the need to manually manage and bid to individual products. In the coming months, we’re improving them to optimize across multiple business goals.

Beyond maximize conversion value, you’ll also be able to select store visits or new customers as goals. Machine learning factors in the likelihood that a click will result in any of these outcomes and helps adjust bids accordingly.

Machine learning is also used to optimize where your Shopping ads show—on Google.com, Image Search, YouTube and millions of sites and apps across the web—and which products are featured. It takes into account a wide range of signals, like seasonal demand and pricing. Brands like GittiGidiyor, an eBay company, are using Smart Shopping campaigns to simplify how they manage their ads and deliver better results. GittiGidiyor was able to increase return on ad spend by 28 percent and drive 4 percent more sales, while saving time managing campaigns.

We’re also adding support for leading e-commerce platforms to help simplify campaign management. In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to set up and manage Smart Shopping campaigns right from Shopify, in addition to Google Ads.

Tune in to see more

This is an important moment for marketers and we’re excited to be on this journey with you. Tune in at 9am PT (12pm ET) today to see it all unfold at Google Marketing Live.

Earlier this week we announced Google Marketing Platform, which brings together DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite into a single solution to plan, buy, measure and optimize customer experiences across channels and devices. But we all know having great technology is only part of the solution. You also need people with the expertise and knowledge to fully take advantage of everything the technology enables. It’s not unlike relying on Sherpas to help guide you from basecamp to the summit. You may be able to make the ascent on your own, but engaging a team of experts with a track record of success greatly improves your chances of making the summit. That’s why we’re excited to announce Google Marketing Platform Partners, a new program designed to ensure you have access to all the resources you need to get the most value from Google Marketing Platform.

A robust ecosystem of skilled practitioners and companies

More than just a replacement for the existing programs, Google Analytics Certified Partners and the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partners, the new program is designed to provide a robust ecosystem of resources, no matter your needs. The foundation of the program is scaled training and capability-building across all the Google Marketing Platform products. Whether you’re looking to build skills in-house or partner with a service provider, the program helps ensure the needed skills and resources are readily available. With more than 500 companies in the program at launch, including leading interactive agencies, system integrators, and top technology, data and media companies, you’ll be able to find a partner to support multiple facets of your business.

Three unique designations

From skill-building to broader, strategic partnerships and technology reselling, the program is designed to deliver the range and quality of expertise you expect:

Certified Individuals: To help increase the talent pool available supporting the Google Marketing Platform, individuals will be able to access a growing library of self-study materials and complete individual product certifications. Successful completion signals an individual’s expertise with specific Google Marketing Platform products.Certified Companies: Certified Companies provide consulting, training, implementation, operations and technical support services for Google Marketing Platform. These companies not only have individuals certified in one or more products, but they have a high level of knowledge, practical and industry experience, as well as stellar customer references. These strict requirements ensure they have both the expertise and a proven ability to deliver results.Sales Partners: Sales Partners are Google Marketing Platform experts, just like Certified Companies, but partner more closely with Google in providing consulting and support services, in addition to selling the technology on our behalf.

Get started today

Whether you’re looking to add talent to your team, up-level your current talent, or complement your team with a partner company, Platform Partners offers a trusted source to help close the gaps. And we’ll continue to build out additional skill-building resources, refine our certifications and add new partners covering more countries and languages. To get started on taking your marketing to even greater heights, browse our current Partners to find a partner equipped to help you get the most from your investment in Google Marketing Platform.

The online world was very different when DoubleClick debuted in 1996. Things we take for granted today, like texting emoji, sharing funny YouTube videos, or taking smartphone selfies were all years away.

Of course, changes in technology have meant changes for digital marketers. There’s been an explosion of channels, formats and data. Consumers are also more aware of how they’re being marketed to and how their data is being used—and they want more control.

To address these new realities, marketers need tools that make it easy to get better results from their marketing in a way that puts privacy first.

Google Marketing Platform brings together DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite to help you plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place. Google Marketing Platform helps you deliver more relevant and effective marketing, while ensuring that you respect your customers’ privacy and give them control over their data.

In our recent survey of global marketing organizations, we learned that the #1 priority for marketers is to better understand their customers. By offering tools that make it easy to collaborate and share insights, Google Marketing Platform helps achieve this customer-first approach to marketing.

In the U.S., adidas has started working more collaboratively across their digital teams to share insights and get a deeper understanding of their customers. Chris Murphy, Head of Digital Experience, describes their approach:

“Our adidas teams work together in one environment where we can see audience insights, what creative we’re running and where, how it’s performing, and make changes almost in real time.”Chris Murphy, Head of Digital Experience, adidas

Better results with ads plus analytics

Google Marketing Platform builds on existing integrations between the Google Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick advertiser products. Marketers have seen great results when they use ads and analytics technology together. For example, BookIt used Analytics 360 to uncover insights about the types of travelers interested in their brand and used these insights to create more relevant campaigns in Display & Video 360. The result was a 20 percent increase in revenue.

Now, with Google Marketing Platform, we’re introducing ways to make our products work even better together. For example, the new Integration Center helps you discover and easily setup valuable connections between products.

Google Marketing Platform also supports 100+ integrations with exchanges, measurement solutions, and other technology providers. In short, you can choose what media you buy, how you buy it, and how you measure it.

Search Ads 360 and Display & Video 360

With Google Marketing Platform, we’re also making changes to some of our advertising products.

Search Ads 360 is the new name for DoubleClick Search. Search Ads 360 will continue to help you plan, buy, and measure your search campaigns on Google and other search engines.

Display & Video 360 brings together features from our display advertising products: DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center. Display & Video 360 allows you to execute ad campaigns end-to-end in one place, creating efficiency in how you work and helping your teams do more together.

Looking ahead

This is just the beginning of the next chapter in our platforms story. We’re committed to building solutions that help you achieve your marketing goals while meeting consumers' high expectations for privacy, transparency and control.

We’ll be sharing more about Google Marketing Platform and Display & Video 360 at Google Marketing Live. Sign up to watch the live streamed keynote on July 10, 9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET.

Posted by Brad Bender, Vice President of Display and Video Advertising